You see you cannot
help yourself, if you would. At this particular time we had had four
successive meetings, averaging four hours each--wholly occupied in
whipping in a quorum. At the first only eleven men were present; at
the next, by force of three circulars, twenty-seven; at the third,
thanks to two days' canvassing by Auchmuty and myself, begging men to
come, we had sixty. Half the others were in Europe. But without a
quorum we could do nothing. All the rest of us waited grimly for our
four hours, and adjourned without any action. At the fourth meeting we
had flagged, and only got fifty-nine together. But on the first
appearance of my double--whom I sent on this fatal Monday to the fifth
meeting--he was the _sixty-seventh_ man who entered the room. He was
greeted with a storm of applause! The poor fellow had missed his
way--read the street signs ill through his spectacles (very ill, in
fact, without them)--and had not dared to inquire. He entered the
room--finding the president and secretary holding to their chairs two
judges of the Supreme Court, who were also members _ex officio_, and
were begging leave to go away.
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